Fastest growing mobile business sectors 2024

The modern smartphone, ushered into existence in 2007 with the launch of the first Apple iPhone, has had a seismic impact on virtually every aspect of daily life. This is because it took what was already an immensely useful device – the home computer, and made it in one strike highly portable and intuitive to operate.

It’s easy now to forget that the first generation of the iPhone didn’t even have any third-party apps available for it, so successful alone was the innovation of touch inputs and competent mobile web browsing at the time.

Of course that has all changed today, with the duopoly of mobile operating systems – iOS and Android – presiding over a collected app ecosystem numbering in the millions. In 2024, it is estimated that upwards of 85% of the entire global population owns and uses at least one smartphone or related device, making it the single most successful product category in human history.

Accordingly, establishing a foothold on mobile platforms is big business, with representatives across the full spectrum of the market investing heavily in increasing their presence on these devices. But what are the mobile sectors to watch in 2024?

Gaming

The earliest games to enjoy success on touchscreen smartphones typically leveraged the novelty of the devices’ accelerometers and capacitive displays with early hits including Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump and Angry Birds. These games were built to be accessible, and enjoyed wide appeal – but they did also contribute to the perspective that gaming on mobile was more of a sideshow than the main event.

This reputation has proven hard to shake off, not least due to the fact that some of the biggest games on mobile today belong to the so-called freemium category. There’s no denying the fact that smartphone games are a hit with players who wouldn’t even consider buying a games console. In capturing this new demographic, and replete with their novel monetization procedures, mobile gaming now accounts for over half of all revenues generated by the wider games industry.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that minigames are all there is to it. Improvements in hardware and development have increasingly turned the smartphone into a premier gaming device on its own merits, with dedicated gaming phones now a popular and growing category. The arrival of cloud gaming services mean that players cannot enjoy the likes of flagship Xbox games streamed directly to their devices, and 7th generation console games are commonly ported over to play natively on modern phones.

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Elsewhere, well-established online games sectors have found new life and new audiences on mobile, with the likes of the iGaming market proving to be a particularly good match to this new context. There, a new generation of tech savvy casino aficionados are making the most of dedicated platforms like Vegasslotsonline UK to access top tier card and table experiences on mobile. With such providers furnishing users with a compelling array of welcome bonuses and sign-up offers, the organic reach of this sector has combined with its lightweight mobile optimisation to make it one of the fastest growing subsets of the wider industry today.

Fintech

There’s no denying the fact that gaming has proven to be one of the most successful components of the modern smartphone business market – but its impact remains limited to those segments of society interested in playing games.

Fintech, on the other hand, encounters no such restrictions. That’s because everyone needs to manage their finances. Fintech – short for financial tech – got its start in the wake of the financial crash of the late 00s. This coincided with the rise of the modern app ecosystem, and the opportunity to craft direct, efficient and lightweight alternatives to conventional banking procedures appeared to be a no-brainer.

Nowadays more people than ever conduct all their banking, and manage their finances, in-app in any number of leading Fintech organisations. Leading lights from Revolut to Monzo and Starling have reconfigured the wider industry, forcing legacy banks to adapt to this new context.

In recent years, the growth of contactless payments has further fed into the success of Fintech, with most phones now shipping with NFC chips, making their devices an all-in-one wallet and banking solution.